With regard to human nutrition our most important foodstuffs include milk products, and within this cheese consumption plays a decisive role. The cheese production of the world is approximately 15 million tons/year.
This dynamically growing tendency is a world phenomenon and surveys have shown that in addition to their relatively low prices cheeses are good dietetic foodstuffs with high lactalbumen and calcium and relatively low caloric value, resp.
The production processes of some cheeses (soft, mould, semi-hard, hard cheeses) and cheeses made of sour milk (products made of curd) changed significantly in the course of the last century, because of technical development and owing to the possibilities, which were made available by microbiological research.
The dry matter content of standard cows milk is 12,5%, whereas 87.5% of it is water. In the course of various procedures about 50% of this dry matter content (12,5%) can be extracted into the cheese, whereas the rest of the dry matter content (6.0-6,5%) stays with the whey, the by-product of cheese production.
The above description indicates that whey contains 94.0% water, but because of its high protein content it is suitable for further processing. Because of its high water content, further processing of the way is expensive, thus processing whey is not wide-spread in some countries, in the latter case it is used either for foraging, or a significant part of it is discharged into sewers. After such discharges the products of decomposition are a threat to environment.
Whey obtained in the course of cheese production has a lactalbumin content of 0.5-1.6%, this can be as much as one third of the total lactalbumen content of milk, and depending on the type, contains also some fat (0.4-1.6%). Fat can be separated from whey by centrifuging, but it is more difficult to re-use the whey treated this way. No procedure for the extraction of lactalbumin remaining in the whey, with the aim to improve the principal cheese product, has been elaborated yet. The extraction of lactalbumin from the whey is expensive and secondary products are the result (whey powder, whey cell, etc).
According to the state of art, processes used in cheese production are more-or-less the same. All processes are based on full base milk, which undergoes processing in raw- or sterilized form. (Manual for the Milk Processing Industry, Mez gazdasagi Kiado, Budapest, 1981, pages 428-522).
As regards sour milk products (curds), part homogenizing is a well-known method, yet it is not widely used in practice, because of the low improvement of yield. Experiments are going on with the aim to increase the yield by treating cream under low pressure. This is an important point in the first line in curd production. A solution different from standard, traditional production is the application of an ultrafilter.
This solution is focused on the extraction of the total contents, thus it can be used only within a small spectrum, thus being just one more choice in the practice.
The object of the present invention is to provide a process for reducing lactalbumin content of whey and thus improving the yield of the principal cheese product. We wish to realize the improvement of the yield by the extraction of excess lactalbumin. The extraction of excess lactalbumin increases yields, improves the quality, and is more environmental friendly because of its reduced presence in the components of whey.